Today we would like to introduce to you two new graphics card cooling systems from Zalman and Gigabyte that use popular heatpipe technology. However, their design, application field, efficiency and pricing are very different from one another. Read more in our review!

Installation Tips

As for the actual cooler assembly and installation on the graphics card, I have to say right away that although it is very simple, it will still take you quite some time to complete. You can find the detailed description of the installation procedure on the company’s official web-site. Here I would only like to show you the schematics of the retention types and the list of supported graphics cards for Zalman VNF100 cooler:

As you can see, this list is quite long and it even includes such “hot” graphics cards as GeForce 7900/7950. But don’t get too excited about it just yet. Check out the test results first, before making any conclusions.

To cut the long story short, if you wish to install Zalman VNF100 onto a graphics card, you need to insert the base into the retention type that fits your graphics card (Socket A or Socket B). After that you need to crew it to the PCB with the spring screws, so that it gets pressed against the GPU heat-spreader:

Then you need to apply thermal grease to the base grooves and set Zalman VNF100 on top locking it tight in this position with the decorative heatsink included with the cooler. This is what Zalman VNF100 looks like on GeForce 7900 GS:

I would like to point out a few things here. First, as you can see, two memory chips on the front of the PCB will remain without heatsinks, because the heatpipes won’t let you put them on. Although on other graphics cards this may not be the problem. Secondly, since the heatsink is actually positioned behind the graphics card, then you need to make sure that there are no components in the area around the PCI Express graphics card slot on the mainboard that would rise above 40mm. In our case, we had to remove the tall Thermaltake Extreme Spirit II cooler from the mainboard chipset, but again, this is an individual case. I don’t think that many of you will have tall heatsinks/coolers in that area, but nevertheless, make sure you check it out in advance.

The recommended retail price of Zalman VNF100 is around $29-$30, which seems to be too much for a passive heatsink, in my opinion. For example, you can buy Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 for the same $29: